Archive for January, 2013

First Life

Lucy was abandoned by her mother at the age of two weeks. She was found next to a big trash bin in an alley in Beverly Hills.

Second life.

Emma, my stepdaughter begged her father to let her keep the kitten at his house in Coldwater Canyon. Lucy moves in to the Coldwater house and is helped by Emma to pee by rubbing low on her belly. Tiny circular strokes, the way a mother cat would lick a kitten to help teach their baby to pee. She is bottle-fed. After a few months she is fully realized kitten that can pee and eat on her own. She does not however fit in all that well. Lucy remains a feral. Docile at times, she is starting to lose her audience. Lucy is not a warm and cozy kitten that wants to be held. Let me put it this way…she wants to, but she will have to bite you.

I posed nude, you know. Several times. Me and my two good buddies. All three chicks, totally naked. In a bathtub. It was for an artist who thought this would make a great painting. Or, perhaps, it was a commissioned painting. Either way, I was asked, and I was in. It got cold because we sat in that water for hours. Or did it only seem like hours? The two friends of mine were sisters, Lori and Lesly. I slept at their house a lot. We were kind of inseparable. Only, secretly, it was Lesly, the younger one, who I was closest to; she looked up to me because I was older. Lesly rocked herself to sleep in this crazy, enviably violent manner that totally intrigued me. I guess I should reveal that I was nine years old, though I was trying to figure out a way to tell the whole story without saying how old I was, to make it funnier. However, it’s probably not all that funny to imagine an adult woman after you hear the tale.

Here is what happened, one fateful day, in that water-filled tub. I farted. Yep. As a kid, I was pretty much constantly constipated. Truly, I spent my whole childhood blocked up, because I ate no fiber and consumed mostly mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread (which you would know, if you’re following my blog), so it’s not a surprise, really. There we three girls were that day, and when their mother, the artist, told us to get out of the bath, I looked back at the water and saw a turd floating about. A little rabbit sized pellet of a thing, just like the one that I was used to expelling — to use a polite word. I’m trying very hard to keep this polite and not say shit.

When I would visit my friend Lisa in London in the early 80’s, I would sometimes see my bi-country friend Allan. He lived here in L.A. and also London where he was a television producer. His flat was in the Holland Park/Notting Hill area, but I love the name Ladbroke Grove so much that I want to say he lived there. I love all the names of the streets and villages in Great Britain.

On occasion, he took me along for a Sunday lunch he had been invited to. Allan would say, “This bloke wants me to come round, would you fancy joining us?” Once there, I was in awe of the carefree, unkempt, unfazed style of the host, hostess and everyone really. When I entertain, I’m stressed out, dressed up, have too much food and am just generally overwhelmed by it all. Whereas, these folks looked like they stayed up too late (not a touch of makeup on the women) and hardly gave a thought to the guests they were now entertaining in their home. This was the antithesis of the Martha Stewart entertaining regime. The houses weren’t straightened up, nor the tables set. Drinks went around first. Drinks seemed much more important than food. Then slowly (sometimes hours had passed), and oh-so casually, the women would find their way to the kitchen and start hunting for leftovers. WHAT? They invited people over without even the forethought of what food they might serve. It was baffling. Then suddenly, from the refrigerator they would pull out a partially eaten baked potato, and other seemingly random items that might be thrown into the mix; an old cucumber here, a bit of a tomahto there. The women were like highly evolved ants or bees, each with her specific job to do. Finally, a very satisfying, thrown together, science experiment of a meal would be presented. It was outstanding. Unforgettable really, which is why I’m writing about it all these years later. (more…)